Today's track: TV on The Radio — Test Pilot

Aviation has been following my family around for as long as I can remember.

My dad grew up near Warwick Airport in Rhode Island. Now called T.F. Green — but when it opened on September 27, 1931 as Hillsgrove State Airport, it drew the largest crowd that had ever attended a public function in the United States. At the time. A state airport opening in Rhode Island pulled the biggest crowd America had ever seen at a public event. That's a wild flex for a state that small.

And my dad grew up right next to it. He's got the stories to prove it.

Back in Vietnam, guys figured out they could drop drugs out of a plane before landing and go pick them up from the field later. Police knew it too — they had a sting set up near the airport. One day my dad finished his shift at Dunkin' Donuts and cut through that field on his way home. Wrong place, wrong time. Officer stopped him, ready to make an arrest.

And then another officer walked up and said: let him go. He just served me coffee at Dunkin' Donuts five minutes ago.

That's my dad. Saved by a cup of coffee.

He was also in a plane crash. And at one point almost bought into a small airline — just hops and skips between Warwick, Boston, and New York. It didn't last. The equipment wasn't great. Probably one of his better decisions to get out.

Then there's me.

I grew up in Springboro, Ohio — right next to MGY. The Wright Brothers Airport. So close that my street was the designated emergency runway. Double the width of any normal road. The running joke in our house was that it was the perfect place to learn how to drive. Plenty of room.

It wasn't just theoretical, either. One time a CareFlight helicopter landed on our street for an actual emergency. I slept right through it. I had just finished a 24-hour rock-a-thon at church and I was completely done. Neighbors watched a medical aircraft land outside. I was out cold.

But here's the thing about that whole region — it's ground zero for aviation history. The Wright Company factory, founded in 1909, was the first factory ever established for the sole purpose of building airplanes. The first building was completed in 1910. A second was added in 1911. Those buildings are still standing — the oldest aircraft factory in the United States, still there.

MGY sits in the middle of the most aviation-dense historical corridor in America. That was my childhood airport. My street was its emergency runway.

I'll also say this, for the record: if you bake a cake in Ohio and eat it in North Carolina, it's still an Ohio cake. We were first in flight. Full stop.

And just down the road was Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. My sister went to Wright State for undergrad. You couldn't grow up in that area without knowing what Wright-Pat was.

Here's what makes it genuinely interesting: during World War I and World War II, Wright-Patterson was the place they brought crashed planes and broken machinery. They'd take them apart, study them, reconstruct them — reverse engineering whatever they could to gain an edge. That was the mission.

Which, of course, is exactly why the running theory is that Wright-Pat is also where they took the alien spacecrafts. Think about it. You've got a base that exists specifically to reverse engineer things that fall out of the sky. If something unusual ever did come down — where else would it go?

Lots of this could be folklore. I'll let you decide.

What I can tell you is that Wright-Pat was reportedly on the list of the top twenty nuclear strike targets if things ever went that direction. Too many prototypes. Too much classified machinery. Too much institutional knowledge in one place.

Then I moved to Louisville. And landed — of course — next to Bowman Field.

Established in 1919. Kentucky's first commercial airport. The oldest continually operating commercial airfield in North America. That's not just a Louisville distinction — that's a continental record. It predates the interstate highway system, commercial radio, and talking movies.

The land itself has a wild origin story. It was first owned by pioneer Colonel John Floyd. Then it passed to Mary Caldwell, who had married a German baron — Baron von Zedtwitz. During World War I, the government seized the land from Caldwell's heirs under the Alien Property Act.

The oldest airport in North America literally sits on confiscated enemy property.

And then there's this: Bowman Field was used as a filming location for Goldfinger. The James Bond film. Principal photography of the hangars and aircraft — Pussy Galore's Flying Circus — was done right there in the fall of 1963. One of the most iconic Bond films in history used a Louisville airport as a set.

My friend Sam Berry flies out of Bowman Field. He invited me up once — on September 11th, of all days. We went up, and at some point I asked him — hey, if I'm sunning in my backyard, can anybody see me from the air?

Sam and I both confirmed it: there's no way you'd be seen from up there.

Sun away, y'all.

Rhode Island to Dayton to Louisville. My dad nearly got arrested crossing an airport field. I grew up on an emergency runway next to the oldest aircraft factory on earth. Now I live next to the oldest commercial airfield on the continent — where James Bond once filmed a movie on confiscated enemy land.

Some threads just follow you.

PS: The magic I just described is all around you — you just have to be curious enough to go looking. Talk to AI about the things you notice, the things you wonder about. Next time you're at the Speed Art Museum, take a picture of a piece that catches your eye and ask Claude to walk you through the artist's story — what shaped them, what made their style unique, what they were trying to say. You'll walk away with a depth of feeling for that work you couldn't have found on your own. More knowledge, more meaning, more romance in everyday life. Go find yours.